The economic value of One Health in relation to the mitigation of zoonotic disease risks.

The essence of One Health is an interdisciplinary approach combined with some degree of intersectoral integration that is aimed at mitigation of human and animal health risks, taking account of environmental, ecological, social and economic factors. While a large number of international stakeholders now consider the One Health approach necessary for more effective protection of the global community against health threats, there is still no systematic allocation of resources to integrated national or multinational programmes, partly due to the inertia of existing sectoral systems and the lack of convincing economic arguments in support of the approach. We propose different degrees of sectoral integration depending on system types and associated economic efficiency gains to be expected from a One Health approach.

A one health perspective on HPAI H5N1 in the Greater Mekong sub-region.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 has been a global concern for almost 10 years since its epidemic emergence in South-east Asia in 2003/2004. Despite large investment of resources into the region, the infection has not been eradicated and continues to result in outbreaks in poultry and a small number of human fatalities. This review synthesizes the knowledge base generated by a vast number of research activities conducted in the region and beyond, and adopts an interdisciplinary perspective consistent with the one health paradigm towards analysing the problem and formulating possible policy solutions.

Implications of global and regional patterns of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1 clades for risk management.

This paper analyses the publicly available data on the distribution and evolution of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIV) H5N1 clades, whilst acknowledging the biases resulting from the non-random selection of isolates for gene sequencing. The data indicate molecular heterogeneity in the global distribution of HPAIV H5N1, in particular in different parts of East and Southeast Asia. Analysis of the temporal pattern of haemagglutinin clade data shows a progression from clade 0 (the 'dominant' clade between 1996 and 2002) to clade 1 (2003-2005) and then to clade 2.

An analysis of the spatial and temporal patterns of highly pathogenic avian influenza occurrence in Vietnam using national surveillance data.

The objectives of this study were to describe the spatio-temporal pattern of an epidemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in Vietnam and to identify potential risk factors for the introduction and maintenance of infection within the poultry population. The results indicate that during the time period 2004-early 2006 a sequence of three epidemic waves occurred in Vietnam as distinct spatial and temporal clusters. The risk of outbreak occurrence increased with a greater percentage of rice paddy fields, increasing domestic water bird and chicken density.